May 17, 2008	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 11, 1429

BOCHUM (Germany), May 16: The Dalai Lama insisted on Friday he was not seeking independence for Tibet, as he pressed ahead with a five-country western tour.

“We want to live in peace with our Chinese brothers and sisters,” the Tibetan spiritual leader told a news conference in the western city of Bochum on the second day of a visit to Germany.

“We are not seeking independence,” but merely greater autonomy and more respect for Tibet culture, religion and language, he said.

The Nobel peace prize winner said that although he was opposed to all forms of violence, he admitted there were some in Tibet who favoured a different course.

After Germany the 72-year-old will go to Britain, Australia, the United States and France in his three-month tour.

In Germany, the Dalai Lama will meet neither Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is in Latin America, nor Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, nor President Horst Koehler. Critics accused the German government, which has designated Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul to meet the Dalai Lama, of appeasing China after a chill in relations caused by Merkel receiving him last year.

The schedule this time has left neither side happy, with the Dalai Lama’s representative in Europe branding Steinmeier’s decision not to meet him “an unhappy one” and China protesting about Monday’s meeting with Wieczorek-Zeul.

Wieczorek-Zeul defended on Friday her decision to meet him, telling Spiegel Online it was her job to meet religious leaders and to promote inter-faith dialogue.

According to Spiegel, Steinmeier – who has been active in pressing for dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama – is worried that the meeting with Wieczorek-Zeul will harm relations between Germany and China.

A foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday that he had not been informed in advance about the meeting.

“It is I that decide whom I meet. I do not need permission to do so,” Wieczorek-Zeul protested to the magazine.

A report in the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Friday said that Merkel had personally intervened to ensure that Wieczorek-Zeul met the Dalai Lama, but a government spokesman denied that this was the case.

In Bochum on Friday afternoon, around 3,000 people gathered to hear him give a speech. “This should be the century of peace and dialogue,” he told the crowd, calling for all nuclear weapons to be scrapped and for the world to be demilitarised.

He added that globalisation must be on the wrong path when it leads to rising food prices, and called for harmony between the world’s religions.—AFP